VIDEO: Islam in America Part III

Rageh Omaar talks to prominent African-American Muslims like (now the late) Imam Warith Deen Muhammad. He also visits a half-way house for Muslim ex-prisoners.




Bookmark this on Delicious

CRIKEY: Israeli torn between ''Islamists'' and ''the Muslim thugs'' ...

Visiting Israeli Professor Raphael Israeli presents different faces for different audiences. Sometimes he says his target is only “Islamists”, ie, those Muslims who want to impose a political version of Islam on secular democracies.

Certainly this is what he said in a letter to The Australian. Here's an excerpt from The Oz report on February 19 2007 ...

A VISITING Israeli academic has blasted Australia's Jewish leaders for disowning him after he raised concerns about the level of Muslim immigration in Europe and the consequences of a similar approach here.

Raphael Israeli, Professor of Islamic, Middle East and Chinese History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote to The Australian yesterday to complain about his treatment after a story in the Australian Jewish News which claimed he favoured a cap on Muslim immigration.

The story, which Professor Israeli said didn't accurately reflect his views, led to criticism from Muslim and Jewish leaders without further checks with him, he said. The Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, co-sponsoring his lecture tour, decided to sever ties with him.

"Instead of standing by their guest, and supporting free debate in this country, Jewish leaders have elected to shamefully disown me in their statements that were geared to placate Muslims," Professor Israeli wrote.

"I come from a country dipped in solidarity and that never abandons its fighters in the battlefield. Here I feel abandoned, forlorn, betrayed by people who lack courage and stamina to stand up for principles."

Professor Israeli's attributed comments in the Jewish press last week in part suggested there would be demographic pressure for Indonesian Muslims to resettle. The article quoted him as saying "one of the big possibilities is Australia, so they will continue to come legally, or illegally, and settle here, and when they get to the rate of the 10per cent, like in France, then you will see life will become untenable".

Yet he wrote an almost identical, though more virulent (and need I say honest) letter to the far-Right polemical JihadWatch website. In that letter, he made it clear he was talking about “the Muslim thugs”, without differentiation. In other words, his attitudes are directed to all Australians who happen to tick the “Muslim” box on their census forms. Here's how The Age reported Israeli's remarks ...

A VISITING Jewish professor has lashed out at Australian Jewish leaders for their "shameful submission to Muslim thugs", saying his comments were less harsh than some by the Prime Minister and federal Treasurer.

Hebrew University professor Raphael Israeli, dropped from a proposed lecture tour after comments last week, said political correctness did not allow his remarks to be said, though, privately, all supported them.

He said Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello had said harsher things after "Muslim riots", but "someone elected to seize upon this opportunity now and sweep Australia into a storm in a teacup".

Professor Israeli, who will teach his six-week Islamic history course at the University of NSW, posted his version of the stoush on a website.

On the Dhimmi Watch section of www.jihadwatch.org, he wrote: "The dhimmi-like Jewish leadership cancelled all activities, in a shameful submission to the Muslim thugs and under the false claims of a 'multicultural society' in Australia, which they know is not true."

Regardless of where he stands, we’d be living in denial if we insisted Israeli’s attitudes to that nebulous Arab/Muslim/Islamist/Middle Eastern “them” aren’t gaining some hold.

Why is this so? Who is responsible? And what is being done about it?

Journalism professor and veteran reporter Peter Manning believes that skewed reporting is largely to blame. His research of metropolitan Sydney newspaper reporting pre and post-September 11 shows that the prejudices have pre-dated the emergence of al-Qaeda.

Experts like Dr James Jupp of the Australian National University argue cogently against Israeli’s central thesis on limiting immigration for a particular religious group. Here's how ninemsn reported Jupp's remarks on February 16 2007.

A local immigration expert has dismissed suggestions by a visiting Israeli academic that Islamic migration to Australia should be capped.

... immigration expert Dr James Jupp from the Australian National University said talk of limiting immigration for Muslims was the kind of idea "put forward by crackpots" — even though there is no legal barrier to doing so.

He said banning immigrants on religious grounds is possible as all migrant applications are done in other countries which are not subject to our racial vilification laws.

“You [immigrants] have no legal rights to Australian law if you are outside Australia,” Dr Jupp said.

Proving religious discrimination “would be extremely difficult” as immigrants cannot access our legal system before they arrive in Australia.

”I don’t think you’d have a leg to stand on, you couldn’t prove it,” Dr Jupp said.

He added that officials could easily hide religious discrimination behind the various other requirements immigrants must meet to enter this country ...

... Dr Jupp said that would not occur here as European countries gave full citizenship to emigrants from ex-colonial nations — many of which are Muslim countries.

As Australia has no colonial ties with Muslim countries like Algeria, it was unlikely that Muslims would come to this country in such large numbers as they do in Europe.

I think much responsibility rests with Muslims themselves, especially with religious and organisational leaders who are largely first generation migrants who regard Islam as a relic of their lives “back home” and are generally disinterested in communicating Islamic theology to the broader community.

The ethno-religious nature of the Muslim religious establishment is the biggest reason why Israeli’s claims simply don’t apply to Muslims here (if they apply anywhere else).

On Radio National Israeli said that

... in Islam, secular Islam, or secular Muslims, is a contradiction in terms.

He also said that there is only one Islam, and that Muslims either adopt it or they don’t.

This is the weakest link in Israeli’s argument. Australian Muslims come from over 60 different countries. Australian Islam is more ethno-cultural than religious a phenomenon, reflected in Muslim community leadership drawn from ethnic-based mosques.

To say there is one Islam means there is one Muslim community. But the fact is that Muslims cannot even agree on holding festival days. Israeli says that a growing monolithic Muslim community in Australia is a threat. This Muslim community doesn’t exist down under.

An edited version of this piece was first published in Crikey on 23 February 2007.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


Bookmark this on Delicious

VIDEO: A few minutes with Shazia Mirza ...

Bookmark this on Delicious

COMMENT: Thomas Keneally on prejudice ...

Award-winning Australian author Thomas Keneally knows plenty about prejudice. He was born in 1935 of Irish Catholic stock and grew up in the NSW coastal town of Kempsey. He experienced sectarian prejudice and saw racial prejudice against local indigenous peoples. He also wrote the Booker prize-winning Schindler's Ark, the story of a German businessman who saved a few hundred Jews from Hitler's death camps. The book was made into the famous Steven Spielberg movie Schindler's List.

Keneally is now writing a book about Oskar Schindler. He was recently profiled by The Guardian newspaper on Saturday 15 November 2008. Here's part of what Keneally said on how prejudice, like history, can repeat itself:

The town where I grew up had two Aboriginal settlements. Questions of the balance between races and, when two races don't get on particularly well, how they behave towards each other were everywhere. This was wartime, and the notion that Catholics couldn't be trusted if it came to the crunch, because they would side with the Pope not the Queen, was very strong. It is essentially the same rhetoric that is currently used against Muslims, and even at the time that fascinated me as much as it scared and affronted me. This stuff has always been my bag. It's what I'm interested in.

(Thanks to BC)

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


Bookmark this on Delicious

VIDEO: Islam in America Part II

I've already posted the first part of this Rageh Omaar documentary here. Bwlow is Part 2 of this fascinating documentary.

Omaar traces its history in the US and talks to American Muslims about how their belief is compatible with the principles of American democracy. He also looks at the notion that American Islam is tied intimately to the African American struggle against slavery and for freedom from prejudice. There's also a fair bit of stuff on the establishment of Liberia, an African country created by freed African-American slaves.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf




Bookmark this on Delicious

COMMENT: The Voice of Port Elizabethan Islam

Around 20 years ago, I wrote some questions to the a group of South African Islamic (as opposed to Muslim) scholars calling themselves the Mujlisul Ulama (council of scholars).

Why do I describe them as “Islamic” as opposed to “Muslim”. I guess because I can’t get out of my head the habit of differentiating between something/one who is Islamic and something/one Muslim.

Maududi always used to differentiate between a Muslim state and an Islamic state. A Muslim state was a state with a nominally Muslim majority and whose leaders were nominally-Muslim. You were nominally Muslim if you regarded yourself as being Muslim. Whether you understood what it meant to be Muslim didn’t really matter. It also didn’t matter if you understood why you were Muslim, or whether you aspired to act consistently with the teachings and requirements of Islam. Nominal Muslims were often people who belonged to a tribe or ethnic group that regarded itself as Muslim. You could be an atheist or agnostic – you could still be a Muslim.

On the other hand, being Islamic meant that you strove to follow the ideals of Islam (or rather, what you thought or were taught was Islam). In this sense, the Mujlisul Ulama were Islamic scholars and not just Muslim scholars. Their scholarship was about Islam and they actually believed what they were studying and researching was something coming from God (Allah).

In this sense, the MU were different from those nasty people called “Orientalists” whose task it was to research for the purposes of mere intellectual or academic research and teaching or, worse still, to spread misinformation about Islam with a view to furthering the goals of international colonialism, the CIA, Zionists, freemasons or any other force deemed capable of mounting an international conspiracy against whichever kind of Islam MU happened to subscribe to.

Anyway, so around 2 decades ago, I wrote to the MU seeking a fatwa about whether Mum was wrong to stop me from marrying some gori (i.e. white woman). This particular gori was different though – she was Bosnian and her ancestors had probably been Muslim for much longer than mine (and hence Mum’s).

Within a few months, I received a reply. It was a typewritten aerogram, the author of which wasn’t quite a mujlis. Unless one includes a mujlis of one. Anyway, I was very happy with the response I received from the mujlis, and wrote back asking him to put me on his mailing list.

Since then, I’ve regularly received a copy of the Mujlisul Ulama’s newspaper which is entitled The Majlis – “Voice of Islam”. It’s a fascinating newspaper providing hours of reading entertainment. The cover stories are always well-worth a read. They usually involve condemnation of some Muslim group which doesn’t quite fit the MU’s definition of Islam.

Past editions of The Majlis have included articles on the errors of Western medicine, especially vaccination. I wish their fatwa (religious ruling) was available years ago when I was at primary school and had to undergo painful vaccination injections. Alas, relief arrived a few decades too late!

My most recent edition of The Majlis (Vol 18 No 07) includes these awesome headlines:"THE INTERFAITH MENACE”, “ULAMA OF PAKISTAN DECLARE ALL ‘ISLAMIC’ BANKS AND ALL TV CHANNELS HARAAM” and “THE CORRUPTION OF ‘SHARIAH’ BOARDS”.

The “Question and Answer” sections, which take up the bulk of the paper, are always gems of wisdom. Usually the most misogynistic and offensive question and answer is highlighted and turned into a separate article. In the most recent edition, under the headline “WOMEN & EID SALAAT”, someone asks this impartial question:

Q: A crank women’s group which advocates that women should come into the streets to perform Eid Salaat, justifies their call of enticing women out from their homes ...

The Majlis’ response includes references to “the women’s lib miscreants” and “women who emerge from their homes to prowl in the streets and to wonder in male-dominating terrain”. With such masculinity in their responses, who needs Viagra?

In all seriousness, The Majlis does have some really interesting articles as well as excerpts from the inspiring sayings of some Indian and Pakistani scholars of the deobandi tradition (which also happens to be the tradition I feel closest to, though the deobandi scholars I know tend to use more diplomatic language and are less averse to the real world). These include gems of wisdom from the orthodox sufi tradition.

Anyway, I’d better stop writing. The last thing I need is to receive the negative dua’s of the Mujlisul Aalim. Or should that be Mujlisul Ulama? Who knows?

UPDATE I: I just discovered you can also read The Majlis online. There's also some kind of archive which can be found here. Though it doesn't feel the same as holding the newspaper in your hand!

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


Bookmark this on Delicious

COMMENT: A brief Mark Steyn moment ...

I was cleaning out my car when I came across a copy of the MXNews newspaper from Wednesday 13 August 2008. The paper gets handed out at train stations and other public places.

On page 9, I found a photo of one chap named Mohammed Emad aged 41. All I saw was his face and his eyes closed. Draped over his face was a small marquis. The rest of his body was buried into the sand at the Siwa Oasis, somewhere in Egypt.

So why become immersed in the hot sand? Apparently it cures rheumatism and sexual impotency. I always wondered why they have so much sand in that part of the world. Or maybe this explains why they have so many kids.

Sorry for that Mark Steyn moment.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


Bookmark this on Delicious

VIDEO: Extremists attack Afghan schoolgirls with acid ...

A group of girls determined to receive an education have been scarred for life in southern Afghanistan.

They were walking to school in Kandahar when battery acid was thrown into their faces by two men. Three of the girls are now in hospital with serious burns.




Bookmark this on Delicious